The
White House Project
recently released the results of a poll conducted by Roper Public Affairs
that has some eye-opening results. According to the poll, most Americans
believe men and women are equally qualified to handle issues such as
foreign policy, homeland security and the economy. More amazingly, a large
majority thinks that a female president would be as good or better at the
job than a man.

So what are we waiting for?
It's time to posit a strong, viable female contender for the presidency in
2008. One person that candidate should not be is Sen. Hillary Clinton.
While Sen. Clinton has proven herself to be remarkably adept at playing
the political game, she has done so at a price. That price has been
evidenced in her ongoing support for the Iraq war, and trying to walk the
center line by suggesting that we need to find common ground with the
right on the issue of abortion, somehow losing sight of the fact that
abortion is not the issue, women's human rights are. Electing a woman
because she knows how to fit in will not change anything. But if not
Hilary, then who?

The obvious choice would be
the only American woman who actually has some experience with being a
president, Geena Davis, who plays President Mackenzie Allen in
Commander In Chief. An actress for president? Why not, anyone remember
Ronald Reagan? And Davis can actually act.

The remarkable thing about
Commander in Chief is that it really looks at the difficulties a woman
would face in the Oval Office. The first episode had President Allen
insisting that saving a woman from death by stoning in Nigeria was a
serious foreign policy decision. A few episodes later, her youngest
daughter pops in to surprise her at loud volume just as she is in the
middle of an important diplomatic phone call. Allen manages to handle her
daughter and the caller without plunging the world into a nuclear crisis.
What this series does is show that despite the absurd burdens and
expectations we put on women, they can in fact be world leaders.

The role of Allen is a
natural for Davis, whose roles in Thelma and Louise and A League
of Their Own clearly established her ability to portray strong women.
This issue is also important to Davis off-screen and she is the founder of
See Jane, an organization dedicated to, "improving portrayals of girls and
women in media."

The portrayal of women by the
media is a significant issue. When women's authority to speak is
trivialized, it has a significant impact on their role in the public
dialog. In "On
the Homefront: The Politics of Motherhood"
Meghan Gibons recently suggested that while Cindy Sheehan was a powerful
voice when she speaks about her grief as a mother, her message was
diminished when she spoke more generally about issues.

"But Sheehan, with her
name-calling of Bush, her finger-pointing at unrelated issues like the
administration's response to the flooding in New Orleans and her preaching
on issues on which she's no expert, such as U.S.-Israeli relations, has
fallen into the trap. Her pronouncements distract from her real
qualification to speak out in public: being a mother who has lost a son in
the war."

Gibbons concludes by
suggesting that if the Gold Star Moms and the Gold Star Moms for Peace
could both tone down the rhetoric and meet in the middle, they would be a
much more potent force. Question to Gibbons: force for what? The
implication that being a mom makes you unqualified to have a serious
opinion about other issues is absurd. The media needs to get over the
notion that the validity of women's voices is limited to their
circumstances.

Diane Wilson is another woman
who, like Sheehan, has taken her personal rage and transformed it into
political conviction. Wilson first made a name for herself with her
actions to bring pressure on corporations who were causing pollution near
her home in south Texas. She went on to become involved in protesting Dow
Chemical for their role in the environmental pollution caused by the
factory explosion in Bhopal, India in 1984 because as she points out,
"It's all connected, the pain of a mother in Bhopal whose breast milk is
poisoned with Dow's toxins is my pain."

Wilson inspired the founding
of Unreasonable Women for the Earth. She puts it this way, "A reasonable
woman adapts to the world. An unreasonable woman makes the world adapt to
her. So I urge you women out there to be unreasonable." Wilson is
currently resisting a jail sentence for trespassing at Dow Chemical until
the former CEO of Union Carbide (now owned by Dow) is brought to justice
for his role in the Bhopal disaster.

Wilson and Sheehan are
powerful because they understand that circumstances of their own lives are
not isolated, that there is a connection. Women's political organizations
that previously focused almost exclusively on women's issues are also now
making themselves heard on a broader range of issues.

The National Organization for
Women, Feminist Majority both took an active role in the September
mobilization against the war in Washington, DC and NOW has a petition on
their website with a very detailed vision of how to end the war in Iraq.
In early November, NOW President Kim Gandy along with Rep. Cynthia
McKinney announced plans to march across the bridge into Gretna, Louisiana
because as Gandy explained, "We must remember to speak up when we witness
injustice and pain. The Nov. 7 march to Gretna will begin a yearlong march
to Nov. 7, 2006 -- Election Day." There is no question that women's voices
and women's needs will be factors in the 2006 election and as the White
House Project poll indicates, Americans would consider gender change in
the Oval Office, so why not Geena in 2008?